


between the motions

by kate_button



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Billy Hargrove Lives, Cabin Fic, Canon Compliant, Getting Together, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Post-Season/Series 03, Smoking, Snowed In
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:01:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22272250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kate_button/pseuds/kate_button
Summary: ‘Why did you come here?’Steve feels his neck go prickly hot at that. He came because it’s been a week since anyone’s seen Billy. He came because Max was worried, and he came because he gets a stupid little flutter in his core whenever anyone says his name.He shrugs. ‘Max mentioned it’d been a while since she heard from you.’Billy’s eyebrows knit a little. ‘Phone’s been out. Weather or whatever.’‘Makes sense,’ Steve says. ‘Also I wasn’t sure… I figured maybe you could use some uh. Food.’Billy’s mouth twitches at the corners, not quite a smile. It brings that goddamn flutter back with a vengeance. Makes his cheeks feel warm.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 39
Kudos: 532





	between the motions

**Author's Note:**

> i needed to write a fic where they end up snowed in together. it's been a journey.

Steve’s only been out this way a handful of times. It’s beautiful out here if you don’t think about it too much, skeletal trees and a blanket of snow and never quite enough light. In the summer it’s dense and dark in a different way, too much life, sweet smell of it, the ground soft with rot and growth. Beautiful if you don’t think about it too much. 

El gave Billy the cabin before Joyce moved her and Will and Jonathan the fuck away. No one argued with her. 

It’s been months now since then. Quiet months. Too quiet, really, and Steve’s only been out this way a handful of times because it kind of gives him the heebie-jeebies, makes his skin all prickly like something’s watching him, these trees, this empty space, how fucking quiet it is and how three times now it hasn’t been as empty out here as it should be. No way to know what’s going on underground. When shit might get fucking Lovecraftian again. But Max hasn’t seen Billy in a week and the weather’s been inconsistent and the roads are clear enough to get up to the cabin so here he is. Checking in. Nervous little flutter somewhere between his heart and his stomach. Bag of mandarins and a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter and a half gallon of milk and a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and a couple steaks in a bag in his arm. 

There’s a part of him that’s terrified he’s gonna find a Billy that’s not Billy. There’s another part of him that’s terrified he’s gonna find Billy’s body.

The stairs creak under his boots, and he knocks maybe a little too hard on the door, makes his knuckles hurt. 

Billy answers scowling. Steve’s seen him in that sweatshirt a hundred times but he looks like he’s swimming in it today.

‘You’re not dead,’ Steve says.

‘Nope.’

Steve hitches the bag of food up a little to get a better grip on it. ‘You possessed?’

Billy frowns. ‘Don’t think so.’

‘I brought food.’

Billy shrugs and turns and disappears back into the cabin. Steve follows. 

It smells a little like cigarettes, like maybe every once in a while Billy doesn’t bother to boot and bundle up and slip out to the porch. He probably shouldn’t be smoking at all, considering, but Steve’s not about to tell him that. Would be a bit hypocritical. It also smells like woodsmoke and cedar and it’s kind of cozy, honestly. Lived in. There’s a plaid blanket tossed over the back of the couch. Steve follows Billy to the corner of the room that serves as the kitchen and puts the bag on the counter. Billy pours some coffee in a mug, then pulls a second mug out of the cupboard and fills that one too. Holds it out to Steve, raises his eyebrows.

It’s been like this since Billy came back. It’s not like Steve knows if he was particularly chatty before, it’s not like they were friends, but he’s quiet these days. Turned inward more, or something. He’s lost some of his bulk, slimmed down, carries himself like he’s tired or like he hurts or like he’s carrying something really heavy.

Billy empties the contents of the paper bag onto the counter one by one, then puts all the cold stuff in the fridge. 

‘You brought steak,’ Billy says.

‘I did. It’s expensive I guess,’ Steve shrugs. ‘My dad.’

‘Huh,’ Billy says, digs his thumbnail into the skin of a mandarin until a little burst of citrus makes the air smell like summer, just for a second. ‘Never had expensive steak before.’

‘Don’t overcook it,’ Steve says. Billy peels the skin off the mandarin in one piece, a spiral all the way around, then tears it in half and picks off a section and pops it in his mouth. 

‘Mmm,’ he says, and his eyes close and his head tips back a little. ‘Noted.’ He grabs another mandarin off the counter and kinda floats off into the living room, squats down and opens the door on the woodstove with a creak and shoves another log from the pile inside.

Billy seems alright. As alright as he ever is, anyway, not dead and not possessed and not any immediate risk to himself or his surroundings as far as Steve can tell. His task is complete, technically, he’s checked in on him, gone the extra mile and brought him some food so he doesn’t starve. He could leave. Probably should, even. 

Billy stands back up and sets to peeling the second mandarin and looks at Steve while he does it. 

‘Why did you come here?’

Steve feels his neck go prickly hot at that. He came because it’s been a week since anyone’s seen him. He came because Max was worried, and he came because he gets a stupid little flutter in his core whenever anyone says his name. 

He shrugs. ‘Max mentioned it’d been a while since she heard from you.’

Billy’s eyebrows knit a little. ‘Phone’s been out. Weather or whatever.’

‘Makes sense,’ Steve says. ‘Also I wasn’t sure… I figured maybe you could use some uh. Food.’

Billy’s mouth twitches at the corners, not quite a smile. It brings that goddamn flutter back with a vengeance. Makes his cheeks feel warm.

Watching Billy die had really fucked him up. A lot about the summer had really fucked him up but there hadn’t even been a beat to breathe between stumbling into a Russian facility and being drugged and interrogated and maybe tortured a little - Steve doesn’t like that word, doesn’t like how it makes him feel - and surfacing to find that things were, somehow, _impossibly_ , even worse topside. Him and Billy had seen each other once or twice at the pool, but they’d barely interacted at all since school let out, only a little before that. They’d never been friends, really, but there’d been a kind of truce. The seeds of something, maybe. Max talked about him with something akin to exasperated fondness by the end, and the others seemed to be softening as well. Steve, for his part, had never actually had much of a problem with Billy, only that Billy seemed to have a problem with him. 

Watching Billy die had broken his heart. Torn a hole right in the middle of him. It fucked him up even worse because he hadn’t expected it to fuck him up. Billy was a shit. Bit of a bully. An asshole, unrelentingly. That wasn’t all he was, though, and watching him put his hands up and put himself between the dark and the world and hold it back all on his own, watching him break loose of the fucking horror that had him only to give it all up like some kind of fucking martyr saint - it had fucked Steve up. Fucked him up good. Had him drinking himself blind for a couple weeks until Billy came back. 

‘Don’t suppose you also brought cigarettes?’ Billy says, that little quirk still at the corners of his mouth. 

There’s a carton with like six packs left on the floor of the back seat of his car. ‘You out?’

‘Dangerously low,’ Billy says, ‘feels like it’s gonna snow again.’

Steve nods. ‘Could part with a couple packs.’

Billy plucks a slightly-crushed softpack off the coffee table and fishes a bent-looking smoke out of it, tucks it between his lips. ‘My hero,’ Billy says around it, making his way to the door and tugging on a pair of boots, not bothering with the laces. He pulls a thick coat on over his hoodie, pulls the hood up. ‘You coming?’

‘Guess so,’ Steve says, and follows Billy out to the porch.

There’s snow falling in thick clumps, a white dusting already visible over the places that had melted down since the last time. The whole world feels muffled, quiet like it always does when it snows like this. 

Billy lights his smoke. Offers Steve his lighter as Steve pulls one of his own out of the pack in his pocket. Billy watches him put it between his lips, then flicks the flame to life. Steve leans in and pulls until it crackles. ‘Be right back,’ he says, and carefully picks his way down the snowy steps, crunches down to his car and pops open the back door and pulls three packs of smokes out of the carton there. Billy watches him coming back up, never takes his eyes off him. Steve has no idea what he’s thinking, Billy more impossible to read now than he ever has been. He’s got the sleeves of his sweatshirt pulled most of the way over his hands, tips of his fingers just visible, shoulders curled up a little against the cold. There’s a dusting of snow on his shoulders. 

BIlly keeps watching him until Steve is right next to him again, watches him as Steve holds the cigarettes out to him but doesn’t take them. 

‘You don’t have to do this shit, you know. Just because I… I don’t need your fucking charity.’

Steve doesn’t point out that Billy does, in fact, need all the charity he can get. He’s got a roof and not much else, occasional checks from Joyce with whatever she can spare of Hopper’s death benefits after making sure El is taken care of. It’s not much, but she stretches it as far as she can. Tries to make sure Billy’s fed, at least. It’s not like he can work. It’s not like his father is helping. 

He presses the cigarettes to Billy’s chest. It’s the closest they’ve come to touching since Billy kicked the shit out of him. Billy’s hand comes up to cover Steve’s. It’s to take the cigarettes, Steve knows that, but it makes his heart beat a little faster. 

‘I know I don’t have to. I know you don’t need it.’

Billy huffs and looks away. ‘Fine.’ He takes the smokes, though. Steve lets himself smile about it. 

‘Everyone treats me different,’ Billy says when their smokes are starting to get short. ‘Even you.’

‘Not much by way of comparison, though. It’s not like we have an extensive back catalog of interactions to reference against. You decided to go and die before we ever managed to have a conversation after you beat the hell out of me.’ Steve is impressed with himself. Thinks that’s the most either of them has ever said to the other. 

Billy looks over at him, quick as a whip crack, wide eyed, eyebrows up, lips parted but ticked up a little again at the corners. ‘You were taking too long. Desperate times, desperate measures or whatever.’

Steve wants to laugh, feels it bubbling in his chest. ‘You don’t get to blame me for your martyr shit, Hargrove. That was all you. And anyway, before that it was all weirdly charged insults and, like, peacocking. Pretty sure I could kick your ass now, I’m just trying to keep things fair.’

Billy gapes at him a little, and Steve watches as it morphs into a grin, first one he’s seen since before. The butterflies in his chest get real restless about it. ‘You’re an asshole,’ Billy says. ‘Fuck you.’

Steve shrugs, takes the last drag of his smoke and flicks it out into the snow. ‘Used up all your badass juice on the monster. Easy pickins these days, Hargrove.’

‘Un-fucking-believable,’ Billy scoffs, but he’s grinning, looking out at the trees. Steve doesn’t even feel the cold. Billy gives his cigarette one last drag and flicks it out over the railing. ‘Come on. Fucking freezing out here.’

Steve cooks the steaks. He hadn’t been planning on sticking around for long. Billy sits on the counter and watches, snacks on a couple more mandarins. It’s warm in the cabin, super warm with the fire and even warmer over the stove and Steve finds himself stripping off his top couple layers until he’s down to the old Hawkins basketball tshirt at the bottom of it all, sweating a little at his armpits, the small of his back. Billy keeps sending little bright bursts of citrus smell into the air, cuts through the cooking meat and woodsmoke and Steve thinks he’ll never be able to peel another orange without thinking of Billy, somehow knows in his bones that this is going to be a day that’s going to come back to him in vivid color whenever he smells that particular smell.

‘Want a slice?’ Billy asks, holding a section out between his fingers, and Steve’s got his hands full preparing the steak and doesn’t really think about it, just ducks forward and takes it with his teeth. Billy’s eyes go wide when Steve’s lips brush his fingertips, his empty hand kind of frozen hovering in the air, and Steve goes prickly warm as the tangy-sweet juice lights up his tastebuds. 

‘Thanks,’ he says once he swallows. Billy’s hand kind of drops in slow motion. Steve’s heart is beating really fast.

‘Sure.’ Billy takes another slice of mandarin and puts it in his mouth. Steve’s not, like, _looking_ , but Billy’s cheeks are maybe a little pink. He knows it doesn’t mean anything. It’s warm. Steve’s sweating. But Billy’s hands are also maybe a little shaky, and that’s harder for Steve to explain. 

All of this is hard for him to explain. The flutter in his belly when anyone mentions Billy, the way his death had hit him, the sharp acrid grief he still feels sometimes about it, even though Billy’s back now, alive and solid. It’s hard for him to explain the way he needs Billy to believe he doesn’t see him as only the things he’s done. It’s hard for him to explain the way he trembles when Billy touches him, even a little, even incidentally. It’s hard for him to explain why he came, and why he’s stayed, and why he’s dreading leaving. 

He knows. Deep down, he knows. Has known since the very beginning, maybe, if he really thinks about it. 

Billy moans when he takes his first bite of the steak. Moans ‘oh _god_ , Harrington’ with his mouth full and tips his head back and shuts his eyes and it’s not exactly playing fair and Steve can’t be blamed, really, for the way it stirs something between his hips, behind his belly button. It’s not exactly _fair_ , the column of Billy’s throat as he swallows. Steve ducks his head and takes a bite of his own steak and thinks it’s good, sure, but his dad’s are better. It’s better on a grill. ‘This is _amazing_ ,’ Billy says, and the blush Steve was trying to fight spreads like wildfire across his cheeks, down his neck. 

‘It’s just steak,’ he mumbles.

Billy scoffs, shoves another bite in his mouth. ‘ _Just steak_ , he says,’ Billy says with his mouth full, again. ‘I’ve been eating tv dinners and toast for weeks. _Months_.’

Steve steals glances until Billy’s plate is clean, until he's sopping up the leftover juice with the last bite of meat. He looks older than he did before, has scars on his wrists where his sweatshirt sleeves have slipped up his arms and scruff on his cheeks and chin. His hair is longer, only a tiny bit less curly, mullet grown out a little bit into something kind of wilder, maybe a little softer. He _seems_ softer, even while Steve knows he’s infinitely brave, heartbreakingly strong. Steve feels the urge to protect him, or at the least to stand at his back so Billy knows he’s not alone. He’s drawn to him like a magnet, drawn to all the shocking, beautiful, terrifying new depths Billy’d shown them all in the minutes before he died. 

Billy’s looking at him when Steve finally snaps himself out of it, got a weird little smile on his face. Steve feels called out and frowns about it. 

‘Come on,’ Billy says, chair scraping on the floor as he pushes himself out and grabs both their plates, depositing them in the sink. ‘Gonna smoke.’

Dusk has the sky a dark, dark grey, and the snow is really starting to pile up, a few inches accumulated on the railing and even more steady falling from the sky. Steve’s heart beats a little faster. He can’t really see into the trees. It’s rapidly getting dark.

‘Well,’ Billy says, and lights his smoke, ‘guess you’re staying the night.’

He could drive out, still. Probably without wrecking his car. Probably. ‘I. It’s alright, I can-’

Billy rolls his eyes. ‘You’re staying. Not having you fucking die in the woods because you want to be an idiot.’

His hands are clammy as he lights a cigarette of his own. Like, chances are he’s gonna die in the woods because he wants to be an idiot anyway, but it doesn’t have to be tonight, he supposes. Doesn’t have to be in the snow because he pushed it too long, stayed too long soaking up whatever strange new Billy came back after he died. If he’s gonna die in the woods because he wants to be an idiot he figures maybe he should do it trying to save people. Maybe Billy has a point.

‘Fine.’ He takes another deep drag of his cigarette. ‘Since you asked so nicely,’ he says on the exhale. Billy slants a look his way, quirked eyebrow, lopsided smile. It makes Steve’s clammy hands shake a little. 

It’s want. It’s always been want. Even that very first fucking night at the Halloween party it was there between them, tiny floating ember of a thing, and Steve’s not sure which one of them started it. Thinks maybe both of them. Thinks maybe neither. 

It’s not like he’s expecting anything to happen tonight, but the idea of sleeping while Billy’s in the next room makes his heart beat faster. Maybe it makes his stomach twist up in nervous little knots. Maybe Billy gives him looks sometimes that he can’t quite parse, that Steve thinks he sees something in but maybe that he _wants_ to see something in, that maybe there’s nothing in at all.

Billy turns away, looks back out at the trees, breath making tiny temporary clouds in the frozen air. Steve watches him because he can’t not watch him, head tilted just enough to get a steady view out of the corner of his eye. 

‘Why did you come here?’ Billy asks, not for the first time tonight. It’s so quiet, not a sound but the two of them breathing, and Steve’s heart thuds in his chest. 

He swallows. ‘Max-’

‘Don’t bullshit me. Even if that’s a reason, it’s not the real one.’

Steve doesn’t know how to answer that, doesn’t really know what the answer is. He doesn’t say anything, and Billy doesn’t ask him again, just stares into the trees and smokes and throws a look at Steve, eventually, looks at him real considering and then nods at whatever he sees and flicks his cigarette into the snow and goes inside. 

Steve stands on the porch for a while after that, finishes his first smoke and lights another right after. 

Watching Billy die had fucked him up for a lot of reasons, but the thing that had been hardest to wrap his head around after the fact was the way Billy haunted him; his thoughts, his dreams, manifesting in his mind unbidden and _constantly_ whenever he had an idle moment, which had been often in those first days. The first time he came after Starcourt it was Billy he saw behind his eyelids, and that’s the one that hit him hardest, that had him choking, eyes stinging even as his body sang. He never bothered to unpack any of the shit with Billy, figured it’d fade away or work itself out eventually, but then Billy died and suddenly it was all he could think about. What it meant. Who that made him. What. Whether it was _Billy_ or whether it was _him_. It was suddenly as urgent as it was impossible that he figure it out, that he solve it, that he follow the tangled thread of it all the way back to Billy and learn what was at the other end. 

He’d had lot a lot of frustrating orgasms while Billy was dead. Lot of confusing nights. Eventually he put all of it in a box and tried his best to seal it up tight, conjure images of Billy while he touched himself and never ever think about it by daylight. It worked for a while. Then Billy came back. 

It’s pretty fucking obvious what it is between them, he thinks. How he thinks about Billy, anyway. The worst fucking thing about it is how knowing it doesn’t actually give him any clues on what to _do_ about it. He thinks he wants to know what it would be like to kiss Billy, to let Billy touch him, but the thought of it makes his heart race and anxiety churn his stomach and fear make his skin prickle. He doesn’t know if it’s because Billy is a boy, or if it’s because Billy is Billy, or if it’s because he doesn’t want Billy to think that it has anything to do with how he like, gave his life for the fate of the world or whatever. It’s not a hero worship thing. Billy’s a dick. He also doesn’t know for sure that Billy wouldn’t hit him for thinking it, and he… he figures Billy’s been through enough shit. 

So he knows. He knows that Billy makes him feel a way that no one else ever really has, but the knowing doesn’t do him a goddamn bit of good. Makes it worse, even. Putting a name to it doesn’t help.

He touches the cherry of his cigarette to the snow piled up on the railing, listens to it hiss and die and then drops it over the edge onto the ground. He’s nervous. Been nervous since Max said Billy’s name and he got it in his head to come out here in the first place, but it’s _more_ now. 

Billy’s sprawled on the couch when Steve goes back inside, one hand tucked behind his head, the other holding a book open on his chest. There’s a pale scar on the skin above his right hip, just one tendril of it peeking out from under his shirt, and Steve’s mouth goes dry as he thinks about pushing his shirt up, seeing the rest of it. He’s stretched out, legs crossed at the ankles, and he glances up as Steve strips out of his jacket and hangs it by the door. 

‘You want a beer or something?’ Billy asks him, laying the book down on his chest. Steve slips out of his shoes.

‘You’ve got beer but not cigarettes?’

Billy hitches a shoulder. ‘I don’t really like drinking alone.’

Steve wonders what happens when Billy drinks alone, if he gets melancholy or if he gets angry or if he just gets sick. He goes to the kitchen and pulls two beers out of the fridge, pops his own open with a hiss and makes his way back to the living room to hand Billy his. Billy doesn’t make room for him on the couch and the chair in the corner is piled up with what looks like laundry, so Steve sinks down on the floor and leans back against the couch. The back of his neck prickles - he can feel Billy’s eyes on him, and it makes him feel too big for his body, clumsy and self-conscious. 

‘Here,’ Billy says, and tosses the tv remote into his lap. 

The whole thing is just exceedingly bizarre, has him out of sorts, not sure what to do with himself. He turns on the tv, flips through channels until he settles on M*A*S*H reruns just because they’re familiar. Billy snorts behind him, and Steve glances over and up to get a look at his face. He’s watching the tv, little smile on his face.

‘This show’s funnier than it’s got any right to be,’ Billy says, and Steve’s body temperature ticks up a couple degrees just because he did something Billy liked.

‘My mom used to love watching it,’ Steve says. 

‘She doesn’t anymore?’

Steve shrugs. ‘Wouldn’t know. I moved out, and even before that we didn’t see a lot of each other once I got old enough to take care of myself. When they were home I tried not to be.’

‘Hmm,’ Billy says, and doesn’t say anything else. 

Steve drinks his beer, keeps one eye on the tv and one on Billy, still too aware of every move he makes. Billy smiles whenever anything entertaining happens, sips his beer, lets it rest on his belly when he’s not drinking it. Steve’s itching for something to happen, something other than the jittery nothing, feels like the air is thick with it. He wonders if Billy can feel it, or if it’s just him. 

Eventually Billy finishes his beer, lets the empty can in his hand dangle off the edge of the couch. 

‘Grab me another?’ Billy says, end of it tilting up almost like a question, but also not quite _not_ a command. Steve sets his own beer aside and gets to his feet and takes the empty can from Billy’s fingers, rinses it out in the sink and grabs him another one from the fridge. 

‘Get yourself one too,’ Billy calls out from the couch, ‘you need to catch up.’

Steve gets himself one. When he sits back down he drains the last of his first beer in one go and then immediately cracks the second. 

Billy nudges his shoulder with his foot. ‘Atta boy,’ he says, grinning, and Steve feels himself blush hard enough that he’s sure Billy can see it on his cheeks. 

He doesn’t _understand_. Want has never made him this stupid before, never thrown him off balance like Billy does. 

He drinks his second beer a lot faster than his first one, feels it making his belly warm and his head just a little hazy. M*A*S*H reruns keep playing on the tv, and Steve barely sees them. Billy sets his book on the floor.

‘Another,’ Billy says after a while, and holds his empty beer can out for Steve to take. It’s not a question this time. Steve pushes himself to his feet and takes it, grabs them both another from fridge. 

This time when he comes back Billy bends his knees, opens up a space at the end of the couch and looks at Steve and says ‘sit.’ So Steve sits. He hands Billy his beer and opens his own and then Billy’s legs are across his lap and Steve’s heart is racing and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands.

The only thing he can feel are Billy’s calves across his thighs and Billy’s eyes burning a hole in him. 

He’s fucking solid. Billy. His legs are heavy and Steve can feel the heat of them through his jeans, through Billy’s sweats. He knows Billy’s alive, sees him and talks to him and watches him eat, watches him breathe, but it hits different, this. Feeling him. How he moves. How warm he is.

Steve’s heart is in his throat and his palms are sweating and his heart is hammering like crazy, but he musters what bravery or recklessness or stupidity he can find and lays his hand on Billy’s shin. Just puts it there like it doesn’t mean anything and keeps his eyes locked on the tv and takes a swallow of his beer. Billy stares at him, still, stares until Steve finally glances at him, cheeks burning, whole body burning.

He’s got no idea how to read what’s on Billy’s face. Not a fucking clue. 

His choices are lift his hand up, or leave it where it is. 

He chooses door number three. Gives Billy’s shin a gentle squeeze. Thinks he might throw up even as he does it. 

Billy doesn’t say anything and his expression barely changes, little downturn of his mouth softening out into something a little more neutral, maybe even something a little better than neutral, and then he looks back at the tv. 

Steve lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, and doesn’t let himself linger on the way Billy smiles, just a little.

Halfway through beer number three Billy bends the knee closest to Steve, arch of his foot flush with the top of Steve’s thigh. He lets his leg rest against Steve’s chest, doesn’t bother to look at Steve while he does it, doesn’t bother to even pretend he wants Steve’s permission. It dislodges Steve’s hand, though, and Steve’s got enough alcohol in him to let it slide down, to curl his fingers around Billy’s ankle. 

By the end of beer number three he’s rubbing little circles in the divot above his heel with his thumb, and Billy’s foot is twitching against his leg when Steve digs in just right, and Steve’s head is spinning, way the fuck out of his depth. He’s caught up in it, too far in to pull away, absolutely terrified that every move he makes is going to be the one that Billy deems too far. He feels almost a little sick with nerves, with the way he can’t seem to get his heart to calm down. With the way his dick is perking up a little about the fact that he’s touching Billy, touching him in a way that’s impossible to construe as accidental and that Billy is _letting_ him. 

This time when Billy finishes his beer he sets the empty can on the floor next to the couch, then looks at Steve. Looks and looks and keeps on looking, and Steve stubbornly and self-consciously keeps rubbing his ankle.

‘Why did you come here?’ Billy asks quietly, and Steve doesn’t have an answer any more now than he did the last time Billy asked. He drops his eyes, looks down at his hand on Billy’s ankle. Billy slides his foot up and in, a little higher, a little closer, and Steve can barely breathe his heart is beating so hard. ‘Harrington.’

Steve slides his hand up the leg of Billy’s sweats until his thumb hits bare skin, squeezes until Billy stops the slow slide of his foot, calf tense under Steve’s hand. 

‘Steve,’ Billy tries, and Steve swallows thickly. 

‘Tell me.’ Billy says, demands. Pleads, maybe, just a little. Steve closes his eyes and slides his hand up Billy’s calf a little further, soft hair on his palm, under his fingers, curves around the back where Billy’s softest. 

‘I don’t know,’ he says. It’s the truth. It’s the only truth he’s got access to. He knows how he feels. He doesn’t know what he wants. He doesn’t know why he came. 

Billy sighs, and then he pulls his feet out of Steve’s lap and puts them on the floor, pushes himself up and doesn’t look at Steve, doesn’t say a word as he walks into his bedroom and shuts the door. 

Steve shakes as he gets up, as he pulls on his coat and his shoes and slips out onto the porch, shakes as he lights his cigarette, shakes that turn to violent shivers has he smokes it. His stomach churns. He regrets beer number three. His eyes sting, and he blames it on the cold. 

There’s way too much snow on the ground to leave, and the sky is still dumping it down in big fluffy clumps. 

He’s stupid, and he’s naive, and he wants Billy to come out on the porch and touch him and talk to him or just breathe next to him, but the front door stays closed, and the house stays quiet. 

He’s not sure what Billy was hoping he would say. He doesn’t know what Billy wants and Billy’s not giving him much, hasn’t given him much. He doesn’t know what this looks like, this thing between them, doesn’t know what it would be or how it would work or what he _wants_. What Billy wants. 

‘ _Fuck_ ,’ he whispers, and the snow keeps falling. ‘Fuck fuck fuck. _Idiot_.’

He knows he doesn’t want _this_. Doesn’t want Billy to not want to be around him so badly he shuts himself in his room. 

It takes him a while to notice that his cigarette has gone out. He tosses it and goes inside, picks up their beer cans out of the living room and rinses them out in the sink and does the dinner dishes too because he doesn’t want to go sit in Billy’s living room alone and he’s nowhere near tired, just a little drunk and a little sad and hating himself a little for being such a fucking coward idiot. It’s quiet in Billy’s room, or at least quiet enough that Steve can’t hear anything over the low sound of the M*A*S*H reruns still on the tv. He puts the rest of the mandarins in a bowl on the counter, and when there’s nothing else he can do without overstepping and rearranging Billy’s whole kitchen, he turns off the lights and goes back to the living room and sprawls on the couch, tossing an arm over his eyes and trying to shut his stupid brain down.

‘Wake up.’

Adrenaline shoots through him as he startles awake. He blinks a couple times until his eyes focus. 

Billy’s got scars all over his torso, his forearms. Steve knew it was bad, saw him go down at Starcourt, knelt next to his body before government people and first responders descended on them like locusts. He knew, saw Billy get run through and the dark blooms of blood on his shirt, the huge tears that went all the way down into his torso. He knew it was bad, but it’s a different thing to see the scars now, the deep craters at the centers of the wounds and the lightning-strike white tendrils spider-webbing out. Billy used to spend as much time as possible as naked as possible, but Steve thinks he might be the first person to see this. He swallows. Drags his eyes up and finds Billy’s face. 

Billy’s glaring. He looks furious, looks maybe a little scared in the way a cornered animal does. Steve wouldn’t be surprised if Billy hit him. 

‘Billy-’

‘You know,’ Billy says, and shoves at Steve until he moves, until there’s room for him to kind of plop down on the couch, ‘I kinda thought we might finally be fucking getting somewhere.’

Steve swallows, and Billy looks over at him in the dark. ‘I wasn’t gonna come out here,’ Billy admits, ‘was gonna let you simmer and let you leave in the morning and try to fucking pretend you didn’t spend three episodes of M*A*S*H fondling my leg-’

‘I-’ Steve starts, but Billy keeps going.

‘-like you haven’t been looking at me the way you’ve been looking at me, like you didn’t eat out of my hand, like you didn’t blush when I told you what to do and then did it anyway. I wasn’t going to come out here because why should you get what you want if you’re too much of a fucking coward to admit it even to yourself? You don’t need to admit it to me. I already know.’

Steve’s head is spinning and his face is burning and his stomach is twisting painfully and he feels a little sick with how nervous and how ashamed and how fucking terrified he is. It feels like Billy’s waiting for him to say something, staring at him in the dim moonlight coming in through the windows, but for the life of him Steve hasn’t got a single word left.

Billy sighs, then he shifts, twists around and climbs into Steve’s lap, stares down at him with their faces only inches apart. Steve’s heart feels like it’s about to burst out of his chest or beat so fast it stops altogether. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. Again. 

‘You know what I thought then?’ Billy asks, circles his fingers around Steve’s wrists and sets them on his hips. His skin is warm and smooth and Steve’s thumb rests right on one of his scars and he can’t _breathe_.

Steve swallows, makes his voice work. ‘What?’

‘That it’s really not fair for both of us to suffer because you’re too chickenshit to admit you want to fuck me.’

It knocks the breath out of him. Makes him gasp. The flippant way Billy says it, the bluntness of it, the… the images it conjures. He clutches at Billy’s hips. His whole body is tense. 

‘You do, right? I’m not wrong.’ Billy has his hands on the back of the couch on either side of Steve’s head, and he doesn’t sound nearly as sure as he did a second ago.

He does. He wants… something like that. He wants to make Billy feel good and he wants to touch him and he wants to _be_ touched by him, wants to kiss him, leave marks on his skin that aren’t the ones he got from a monster.

He also doesn’t only want that. He wants Billy’s legs in his lap again. He wants Billy’s lopsided grin. He wants Billy making fun of him and giving him shit, wants to hear him laugh. 

He wants to be something good in Billy’s life. Wants to know all the bad things so he can never ever be them, so he can know what Billy needs protecting from. He wants to be someone for Billy. 

He can’t say no. He doesn’t want to say yes. 

He closes his eyes, brings his hand up and curls it around Billy’s arm and drags it all the way back until he finds Billy’s wrist. He holds it for just a second, loosely, then turns his head and presses his lips to the side of Billy’s arm. Billy’s muscles tighten under his hand, and his breath catches. 

He doesn’t want to risk Billy walking away again, leaving him again, but he can’t, he _can’t_ let Billy start this thinking that Steve only wants him with his body.

‘I came here because my stomach flips over every time someone says your name,’ he says into the scars on Billy’s wrist, and Billy sags a little, settles a little firmer and closer on his lap. 

‘Steve-’ Billy breathes, but he’s not pulling away, and now that Steve’s started confessing he doesn’t want to stop.

‘I drank for weeks after you died. Before you came back. I don’t remember most of it because I was too fucking drunk to stand.’

‘ _Steve_ -’ Billy tries again, a little cracked this time, quieter, raw.

‘I just- I wished-’

‘ _Steve_ ,’ Billy snaps, not unkind, and then his hands are on Steve’s cheeks and he’s looking down at him and Steve’s hand is still holding his wrist loosely and he looks at Billy and he thinks he’s drowning. ‘I’m going to kiss you now.’

Steve can only nod. 

Billy kisses him softly at first, gently, not tentative, and Steve lets him lead. He melts a little when Billy slides a hand back into his hair, when he feels Billy’s tongue on his bottom lip.

He gets hard. They kiss for a long time. It makes his head spin; it feels like nothing else, feels better than anything he’s ever felt before. He feels dazed when Billy finally pulls away, keeping him in place with a fist in his hair. Billy looks down at him, bottom lip caught between his teeth, and Steve takes a shaky breath. 

Then Billy slides off him, sprawls back on the couch next to him. A fierce, terrifying bolt of terror and shame shoot through him, make his limbs tingle, but then Billy’s fingers are on his arm, sliding down until the find his palm, lacing with his own. Billy squeezes his hand.

‘Okay.’

Steve looks at him. ‘Okay?’

Billy meets his eyes in the dark. ‘Haven’t had a boyfriend in a while. Didn’t end well last time. That was another lifetime, though,’ he says, wry little smile on his pretty kiss-pink mouth, ‘things might be different now.’

Everything is different now. ‘Boyfriend?’

‘If you want. Can’t promise I’ll be any good at it.’

Steve swallows. ‘I don’t have the best track record either.’

‘I think I’m willing to risk it if you are.’

It feels strange and foreign in his head. _Boyfriend_. His boyfriend. Billy. It feels strange and it feels foreign but Billy kissed him, he told Billy what he feels and instead of hitting him Billy kissed him and Billy is holding his hand and he wasn’t sure but now he is. He thinks he is.

This is what he wants. 

‘Yeah,’ he says, and swallows down the lump in his throat. ‘Yeah. I’ve uh. Risked more for less.’

Billy pulls his hand out of Steve’s and shoves his shoulder with it. ‘You’re a fucking dumbass, you know.’

‘I know.’

‘You know how long I’ve wanted to do that?’

Steve’s heart thud-thuds. ‘Nope.’

‘Long time,’ Billy says, and doesn’t elaborate. Steve sits with it for a minute, wonders what that means. 

‘Why didn’t you?’

Billy shrugs. ‘Honestly? Seems like such a stupid fucking thing to be terrified of now. Dying is uh. Pretty great for putting shit into perspective.’

‘I bet.’

The silence stretches, but it’s not uncomfortable. The backs of Billy’s fingers are resting against Steve’s thigh.

‘You gonna freak out?’ Billy asks eventually, quietly.

‘I don’t think so.’

Billy nods. ‘Alright then. You uh. You wanna go to sleep?’

‘Kinda wanna have a smoke.’

Billy grins at him, then hops up to his feet and holds his hand out for Steve, tugs him to his feet and keeps tugging until there’s no space between them. Then Billy kisses him again, kisses him easy and sure and Steve can feel the smile on his lips, feels it spreading to his own. 

Billy disappears into his room and comes back with a hoodie and socks on. He pulls on his coat and wraps the blanket from the couch around his shoulders and Steve can’t stop looking at him, can’t stop the wonder he feels, the awe as the word rolls around in his head. 

Boyfriend. 

It scares the hell out of him. It makes him smile.

It’s still snowing outside. Billy sighs with the first drag of his cigarette, and Steve feels the same.

‘I’m not always okay,’ Billy says, looking out at the snow that’s piling up on the ground, halfway up Steve’s tires now. ‘Today is a good day. They’re not all like this.’

Steve thinks about the night terrors, the way he can’t stand to be touched sometimes, the way he freaks out a little bit for no reason sometimes if there’s too much noise or too much quiet. ‘Mine either. I can handle it. Yours.’

Billy nods. ‘You sure you want to?’

Steve takes a deep drag of his smoke, hold it until his lungs burn, then lets it out. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure.’

Billy doesn’t say anything for a while, smoking in silence and watching the snow fall.

‘Kinda looks like you might be stuck here a while.’

There’s very little chance he’s going to be able to get his car down the little gravel road through the trees if it keeps going like this. There’s enough snow piled up that it’s impossible to see where the road even _is_.

‘I could hike out.’

Billy scoffs. ‘In those shoes? Absolutely not. We talked about you dying in the woods because you want to be an idiot.’

Steve grins. Billy gives a shit. Billy wants him to stay. ‘Right. Not allowed.’

‘Not allowed,’ Billy says, gives Steve a little smile. ‘Guess you’ll just have to stick around.’

**Author's Note:**

> [find me on tumblr.](https://un-buttoned.tumblr.com/)


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